A REAL LIFE "OCEAN'S ELEVEN": The 2003 ANTWERP DIAMOND HEIST

If
you thought George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven character was smooth, check
out the velvet finish on criminal mastermind Leonardo
Notarbartolo. In February 2003, Notarbartolo and his gang, known as
The School of Turin, pulled off one of the stealthiest heists in history.
Daring to break into the famous World Diamond Center in Antwerp - where
more than half of the world's diamonds are traded - the group made out
with $100 million in jewels and other loot.

HOW THEY DID IT: Not ones to rush into something this
big, the Turin boys began laying the groundwork for the project three
years prior. Posing as a company owner, Notarbartolo rented an office
in the Center in 2000 and proceeded to obtain copies of master keys and
learn how the alarm system worked. Then, the group waited for the perfect
distraction - the Diamond Games tennis tournament on February 15-16, 2003.
As Venus Williams wowed throngs of spectators (many of them Diamond Center
employees and security guards), Nortarbartolo's crew used their duplicate
keys to sneak into 123 of the building's underground vaults. Simply riding
the elevator down to the basement, they deactivated a motion sensor and
taped over light detectors. Then, instead of just covering the lenses
of the CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, they avoided
suspicion by replacing the tapes with previously recorded footage.

Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting past the vault's 12-inch
thick doors. Knowing the doors were equipped with internal magnets that
would set off alarms if they detached, the robbers drilled through the
bolts, carefully taped the magnets together, and moved them out of the
way so that they wouldn't separate. After that, all they had to
do was break the locks to the safety deposit boxes, rake in the diamonds,
and then quietly flee the scene. To escape undetected, they memorized
the surveillance patterns of the 24-hour police patrols outside the building.
(Hey, they didn't have nicknames like “The King of Thieves”
and “The Magician with the Keys” for nothing.) Amazingly,
even though the heist took place early Sunday morning, authorities didn't
discover anything suspicious until Monday.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Here's a tip for would-be thieves:
If you leave the crime scene with a bag full of diamonds and then dispose
of the bags on the road leading out of the city, make sure you don't leave
your half-eaten sandwich in one of them. Inspectors used DNA evidence
found on the food to nab Notarbartolo, and further DNA traces in the vault
to arrest two other gang members. In 2005, he was convicted, sentenced
to 10 years in prison, and fined $1.3 million. Meanwhile, none of the
diamonds have been recovered. Some have microscopic inscriptions on them
that would reveal their identity, but only if the thieves ever decide
to sell them legally.

(Photo and a very interesting in-depth story by Joshua Davis at Wired
Magazine)

BRUTE STRENGTH AND NUMBERS: THE SECURITAS DEPOT ROBBERY

February
must be a good month for crime. In February 2006, three years after the
Antwerp diamond heist, a Securitas money depot in England was robbed by
a band of thieves who coordinated simultaneous kidnappings. They made
off with a jaw-dropping $92.5 Million (US) in cash - most of it unmarked.
Today, it's considered the largest cash robbery in British history. (Photo:
PA, via Telegraph)

HOW THEY DID IT: Picture this: You're driving along
a road in Stockbury, England, when the whirring sirens of an unmarked
police car startle you from your evening commute. You roll down your window
and chipper police officer tells you he needs to speak with you - in his
vehicle. Oops, you've just been kidnapped. That's how Colin Dixon was
unwittingly reeled into one of the biggest heists of the century. The
crooks handcuffed Dixon - a manager at the Securitas cash collection and
money transport company - and told him his family would be killed if he
didn't comply. Meanwhile, fellow gang members abducted Dixon's wife and
son, posing once again as police offices with a fake story about “an
accident involving your husband”. The manager led the thieves to
the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, where the criminals- wielding guns and
cloaked in knit caps - accosted another 14 employees and made off with
a giant trick full of loot. While the event was certainly traumatic for
all the victims, fortunately, no one was injured.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Good old-fashioned police work.
Apparently, it takes a lot of accomplices to stage multiple kidnappings.
In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with
the crime, including drivers, face police, a car dealer, a salesman, a
roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Guess where she's
headed?

BRAZIL'S BIG DIG: THE TUNNEL RATS BANK ROBBERY

Sometimes
there's a light at the end of the tunnel, other times, there's $72 million
(US). Such was the case in August 2005, when a group of criminals in Fortaleza,
Brazil, used their 260-ft. long secret passageway to make off with some
serious loot. The trick: Spending three months excavating the thing and
tediously sneaking vanloads of dirt past the thousands of workers in the
busy urban area above. (Photo: AP, via SMH)

HOW THE DID IT: For the 23 or so suspected gang members
involved in this operation, the first step was posing as a company that
was renting an office building- which just happened to be located near
a bank. Cleverly enough, the crooks set up an artificial business as an
artificial turf com - called Grama Sintetica, complete with artificial
employees and fancy logo. For weeks, a group of men worked around the
clock digging a tunnel leading two city blocks over to the Central Bank
building Somehow, the process was so shrewdly executed that Grama Sintetica's
neighbors failed to notice that a van was transporting several loads of
dirt away from the building each day. And if their stealthy moves don‘t
seem impressive enough, consider the tunnel itself: In it, the gang installed
electric lighting, air conditioning, and wood-paneled walls (to make sure
the tunnel didn't collapse).

To pull off the heist, the gang managed to break through the bank's
three-and-a-half-foot-wide vault floor, using (as police later discovered)
a bolt cutter, a drill, an electric saw, and a blow torch. Over the course
of the weekend, they eventually removed five containers full of bank notes,
weighing nearly 7,700 lbs. Unbelievably, nobody discovered the theft until
that Monday. All told, the heist required experts in electrical engineering,
global positioning systems, excavation, and, of course, theft. The most
brilliant idea, though? Picking a crowded, noisy area in Brazil for the
heist, reasoning that no one would notice the sound of tools and digging
in the daily commotion.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: The thieves did a good job of covering
their tracks (they used a white powder at the crime scene to hide fingerprints),
but apparently, tunneling underneath nations is a little trickier. Attempts
to transport the money out of the country using truck transports and chartered
planes failed, and the assumed mastermind behind the theft, Luis Ribeiro,
eventually turned up murdered. So far, the police have arrested a few
dozen suspected members of the gang.

NOT-SO-GOOD FELLAS: THE LUFTHANSA AIRPORT HEIST

In
1978, Lufthansa Airlines employee Louis Werner knew two important things:
First, that a Lufthansa airplane occasionally transported unmarked bills
from West Germany to New York's Kennedy Airport, where they were temporarily
held in nothing more than cardboard boxes locked inside a vault. Second,
that he owed about $20,000 in gambling debts to his bookie.

HOW THEY DID IT: The wrong way - with brute force. Even
though it became source material for the 1990 film “GoodFellas”
(plus several books and even a few copycat crimes), the Lufthansa Airport
Heist was a brutal affair. Using a few helpful tips from Werner, infamous
crime lord Jimmy Burke put together an operation that involved several
phases - breaking into the airport's cargo terminal, handcuffing employees,
and subduing guards. Once inside the vault, they found 72 boxes of cash
and jewelry totaling about $6 million (instead of the $2 million they'd
expected). As for the getaway, the gang used bloody force to make sure
no employees reported the crime until long after they'd left the airport.
The entire robbery took only 64 minutes, but it became one of the most
complex and lucrative heists in U.S. history.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Unlike the other heists, in which
some gang members fled the country to hide, the Lufthansa Airlines gangsters
stuck around. Not only that, but they made the mistake of displaying their
newfound wealth a bit too obviously. The police had a pretty good idea
who was behind the crime, and it wasn't long before snitches implicated
Werner and a few others. Many of the participants were murdered before
they could squeal, while still others became informants and joined the
Witness Protection Program. Werner, who organized but didn't participate
in the actual theft, was the only one convicted for a role in the heist.

The article above, written by John Brandon,
appeared in the Jan - Feb 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted
here with permission.

Very interesting stories. Small correction from the THE SECURITAS DEPOT story - In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with the crime, including drivers, *face* police, a car dealer, a salesman, a roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Probibly should be *fake*.

Wow, I can't believe after all that work and years of planning on the first story, they are dumb enough not to dispose of the evidence properly!

As for the rest, it seems like brute force, large numbers of people involved, and having the ego to spend what you stole on extravagant stuff are always a surefire way to screw things up. I prefer smart heisters. :P